The participants of the international seminar hosted last weekend at the FIVB/CEV Regional Volleyball Development Center in Kettering, England

Kettering, England, April 28, 2014 - The FIVB/CEV Regional Volleyball Development Centre in Kettering was the venue for the first international Volleyball seminar where delegates came from international federations and clubs across England.

The two-day DataVolley seminar was aimed at improving the knowledge and application of a number of statistical programmes, including DataVolley, Click and Scout and e - Scoresheet.

“We are delighted by the news that the first international course was hosted last week at the RVDC in Kettering,” says CEV President André Meyer. “RVDCs are meant to turn into hubs for Volleyball excellence but also into the place where people working for our sport come together to share knowledge and best practices. I am confident that this is only the beginning of a long success story that we are proud to share with Volleyball England and the RVDC in Kettering.”

The feedback to the course from the international delegates was extremely positive. Delegate Swen Mallschutzke, a board member from the Liechtenstein Volleyball Federation and their team scout said: “I have been using DataVolley for a while now, but this course has given me so much more knowledge and confidence. It will make a huge difference in helping me to video and scout games and provide a more professional service to our clubs.”

Iceland’s Secretary General Sævar Guðmundsson commented: “DataVolley is an amazing package and will be a big step for our federation. We particularly wanted to learn e - Scoresheet which we will trial at our championships In June. The course delivered exactly what we wanted.”

A number of coaches from English clubs also attended and used the finals of the Super 8 tournament to put the theory to the test.

John Chetham, coach at Rugby Phoenix and Coventry & Warwick Riga said: “We had a great time practicing during the women’s and men’s matches at the Super 8s. We had fun, and we were all successful in producing some good looking stats!! It was a valuable part of the course.”

Adam Phillipps, head coach from Southampton’s Solent Volleyball Club added: “It was great to have the course in England and I found it extremely useful. We’ve been using basic statistics at Solent already but I wanted to go into greater detail of how they can be applied and have a direct impact on our training sessions and league results.”

This is the first ever CEV/FIVB course in England and Volleyball England is hosting two further courses later this year: FIVB Beach Get Involved seminar and the FIVB level 2 coaching course.